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CSC wins Research and Collaboration title at 2017 Techworks Awards

24 November 2017

Friday 24th November 2017: The Compound Semiconductor Centre (CSC), a joint venture between IQE plc and Cardiff University, has won the Research and Collaboration title at 2017 Techworks Awards. The award, sponsored by Science & Technology Facilities Council, was presented during a gala ceremony in London in recognition of the multiple collaborative R&D programme wins, positioning South Wales as the “go-to” place for the development, innovation and manufacture of advanced compound semiconductor related products.

Recent R&D programmes include Project SUPER8, a £1.1M Collaborative R+D project under the recent InnovateUK Emerging and Enabling Technologies Call which focuses on the development of new ultra-high speed transceiver platform to service the enormous growth market in optical data communications in hyper-scale Cloud data centres, and Project CS MAGIC (Compound Semiconductor MAGnetic Integrated Circuits) which focuses on the development of new ultra-sensitive magneto-sensors with integrated electronics.

“We are delighted to have won this prestigious UK award. Collaboration is the DNA of the Compound Semiconductor Centre (CSC), enabling a wide range of business and academic partners to develop new compound semiconductor based technologies from prototyping through to commercial realisation. Recent collaborative R&D programmes won by CSC demonstrate the high level of CS technology activities in South Wales and provide an important milestone towards the establishment of the World’s first CS Cluster, based in the region.”

The STFC-sponsored category celebrates innovative R&D activity involving strong industry and academic collaboration and completed within the last two years. The winner, CSC, has demonstrated “world beating” technology development with very high potential of being adopted by industry.

The ceremony was presented by the BBC’s technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jones.

The Compound Semiconductor Centre was founded in 2015 as a Joint Venture between Cardiff University and IQE Plc, with the mission of accelerating commercialisation of Compound Semiconductor Materials and Device Research, and realising a tangible economic return on the UK investment in this key area of enabling technology. Based in Cardiff, the Centre is a vital milestone towards developing a World-class Compound Semiconductor cluster in South Wales.

TechWorks is the new UK Industry Association for ‘Deep Tech’; the underpinning technologies such as AI, robotics, 5G, machine vision, IoT, analytics and automation that drive the new economy.

Technology innovation has changed and is changing our world at an enormous rate creating new opportunities across all areas of industry and commerce. With this whirlwind of change comes huge political and societal changes, disrupting the established norms in all walks of life.

TechWorks is a new type of industry association at the core of the UK deep tech community with an ambition to harness our fantastic engineering and innovation to develop the UK’s position as a global technology superpower.

TechWorks operates beyond established silos by:

Creating dynamic, connected technical and business communities to empower innovation and collaboration, supporting business growth and investment

Identifying the critical common challenges and leading responses to tackle them

Developing the UK tech ecosystem and partnerships across industry, academia and government to ensure the UK is amongst the best location globally to start, build and scale a Deep Tech organisation